ANALYSIS: Superstate socialists and neocon elites –

why they can only thrive in the context of division

With Spanish house prices still falling, the implications for Iberian bank balance sheets are obvious. A million properties remain unsold. Spanish television is being pretty open about about the massive pressure on Madrid, but there is an undercurrent to all of it suggesting that Spain could break up as a nation. After all, if the banks’ finances are so shot to pieces, what help can the Government be to the regions?

Catalans in particular are being increasingly open about becoming an independent state, and only a fool would ignore the old Civil War enmities that still exist between Barcelona and Madrid. The fully justified fear is that Madrid’s power to resist a schism has been diluted by having to turn to Brussels for help. Some MSM titles are suggesting that, on the quiet, Galacia and Andulucia are also preparing to leave Madrid rule. Given that the latter has a 68% unemployment rate, there is a horrible reality to this possibility.

Tomorrow in Portugal, a big protest in the capital is planned. For the first time since 1974, the military have made an official statement that they ‘will protect the people of Portugal’. The imputation is clear: the army is asking whether the Government still deserves to be the sovereign power in the land.

These are just two examples in Europe of how conscious EU/Troika policy has created the necessary conditions for nation States to break down. But there are more.

In Greece, there is now a clear split between older, more fearful conservative citizens and a more Left-wing anti-EU youth ready to break away from what they increasingly regard as imperial shackles. Layered over this crack in national unity are first, the emergence of the neo-Nazi Right, an object of great suspicion to the thus far protected military elite; and bitter resentment towards the politico-legal elites felt by ordinary citizens.

Italy is intrinsically split anyway between the family/community business/profession thing, a virtual closed shop; medium and larger enterprises responsible for most of the country’s exports; and government-owned enterprises, utilities, and banks whose productivity has been risible for years. There is also a north/south divide exacerbated by the fact that most efficient enterprises are in the north, whereas the public sector/mama and papa disasters tend to be to the south of the country. The geographic divide mirrors Spain, where Basque Country and Catalonian businesses are usually productive, while Andalucia in the South is renowned for nepotism and tax evasion.

All these potentially anarchic national features have been worsened by the euro crisis in general, and Berlin’s obsession with efficiency in particular. But these two specifics exemplify the general: it is very much in the EU’s interests for its member States to be weakened… and so too do the madder neocons work hard to erode the nation as a unit.

Three of the most powerful nations on the planet are, literally, split right down the middle: and it is the difference between the laissez-faire economic and socio-economic cultural model that divides all three. France’s two tribes are split almost exactly 50/50 between the reforming Anglo-saxonistes, and those still clinging to the cooperative farming and adversarial industrial form that has remained pretty much unchanged throughout the Fifth Republic. The United Kingdom has been a dead heat for years between the Thatcherite efficiency-at-all-costs strategy, and those who prefer more or less of the Welfare State as a safety-net. And in the US, the chasm between soi-disant ‘progressive’ Democrats and neocon Republicans yawns more with every election….while remaining close to 50% per side.

Observe how Murdoch’s Fox News winds up the mutual trashing between liberals and conservatives in the States. See how his media (and him personally for that matter) divide the United Kingdom: royalist v republican, Diana v the Windsors, Scotland v England, this Party one election v that Party the next. Thankfully for the French, as a foreigner he is wisely banned from being a media proprietor: but even there, in recent years Sarkozy and his American allies have tried hard to rubbish everything about the traditional French approach to life.

I am at pains to point out yet again that there is no conscious conspiracy in play here, merely a series of greedy, power-crazed bastards who rarely introspect in relation to what they’re about. Rather, they unconsciously seek to divide and thus weaken any and all opposition to their mad objectives. And of course, there is no way Brussels and the markets are working in unison on this one: as we have come to recognise, they absolutely loathe each other.

But perhaps I could summarise by observing that, while the EU is hard at work taking away our socio-legal rights and egalities, whacknut neocon multinational business pushes the envelope each and every day in a bid to see just how much BS we will put up with when it comes to financial repression.

Please don’t see these thoughts as doomsaying: I remain absolutely confident that, sooner or later, superstate and 3%-run societies will be exposed as unworkable. And faced with a stereo-cacophony of potty ideas, I am hopeful that increasingly desperate families and communities will refuse to engage with these headcases, looking instead to build life fulfilment from local rather than global: from responsibility and cooperation, rather than dog-eat-dog division.

The EU politico’s will wring their hands and wail and moan in sorrow over the deaths of so many. Next day they will issue a statement telling everyone that due to their wonderful policies Unemployment has gone down !

I agree with you ,they will not survive because all they know is making loans .This production of abstract money doesn’t make consumption grow , doesn’t create jobs , but they will do it till everybody starts looking like Greece .Hope they soon develop machines that can print food and oil and medicine and jobs .

Eleni, forewarned may be good, but God knows what you folks can do about it…One of my best friends lives in a small flat on the hilly outskirts of Athens with her 88 year old Mother….I have often heard from her how cold and snowy Athens can get…..thats why so many of your apartments have a fireplace !

The problem is that by the time any of the Sprouts even think about transfering funds from rescuing mindless bankers to saving hypothermic pensioners in Greece and any other country in deep recession, it is likely to be much too late. I frankly doubt that they would be capable of organising anything worthwhile anyway. The Red Cross and Save the Chidren may well have a very busy year to come in Europe, thanks to these idiots.

Yes, that seems right – infuriating not to be able to infer a bona-fide conspiracy, but I’ve always adduced a “diffuse conspiracy” which is essentially unconscious. The other day I realised that “diffuse conspiracy” is not even the best analogy; these rapacious / anti-democratic (both) behaviours are, in common with self-organising biological systems, “emergent properties” … there is a certain inevitability about the developing outcomes given the starting ingredients and the growth conditions …..

@P , It is important that you say what you mean to say .Some of us do not know the elephants in the room , for some of us when we came here maybe the elephants were here all ready and we thought were part f the furniture .And time is too short , so please explain.

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years……It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supernational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.”
― David Rockefeller

The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
― David Rockefeller, Memoirs

“For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure–one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”
― David Rockefeller

I am Greek, conservative, free-market, antifascist, antieurope. The illusion of Freedom in Europe ended when the US withdrew leaving a reunited Germany, eager to make up for the …injustices IT suffered second time around. Socialism has been used in Europe very much in the Cloward-Piven mode, not to bring about the collapse in favor of marching communists, but to reinstate Prussians (who invented Communists, after all, Parvus et al). In the US, the paradox continues, with so called “Liberals” (neo-socialist eurosuckers) praising the Prussian comeback. I don’t know about you, but to me this reeks of 1900’s. Or of “1984”, with Eurasia having encroached in Oceania in new and bizarre ways.

Btw, the Neo-Nazis in Greece are an artifice (and I am not one of them). What started as a eurosceptic, pro-national Greek group has been painted into a neo Nazi corner. Just like the Eco-Greens on the other end of the artificial euro-spectrum. Nicely cultivated infighting of a bogus Right and an equally bogus Left. Liberty is the goal, and neo-feudalism is the enemy, and YOU are 100% correct: They can only thrive in the context of division. Whether we will make it or not, only the future will tell.

When even a private bank like greek Alpha Bank (like all greek banks, highly conservative and stable before 2010: based on shipping, they were mostly unaffected by the 2008 toxic debt) criticises the Troikanauts for deliberate negativity…phrasing it mildly and diplomatically…

Divide & rule: Neoliberal interests & EU agendas piggybacking each other: Sovereign against sovereign, region against region, region against Sovereign, left vs right, private sector vs public sector, small scale private sector against Neoliberal corporations etc. And if you push & push [austerity, ‘conditions’, bank failures] the armies will have to step in for ‘public order’…..

Wheels within wheels…the EU has always encouraged the regions, so as to reduce the states, so the stronger regions at least – Catalunya, Basque country – have been long in bed with the EU. Conspiracy? For the EU just a working out of its internal logic.

While we know about the Known Knowns, what about the Unknown Knowns such as: how ‘efficient’ is East Germany now, after 13 or 14 years of the eurozone paying directly and indirectly for re-integration?

@Graham D, that is very bad news about the weather this winter. At the owner’s meeting of my apartment building this month, in upper middle class central Athens, we decided against turning on the central heating this year. The first time ever since the building was constructed in 1950. And yes, even Athens gets cold, very cold.

The Eurozone needs to transfer wealth from the Northern countries to the South. How can this ever happen when, as you say, the individual Southern countries cannot even create balance between their regions. I know Italy reasonably well and i think they need the EU to force restructure on them – it will not happen through any government but they like to be able to say that it would not be their policy but it must be done as it is an EU directive.

I have commented before that if Europe suffers a very cold hard winter, all these “greedy power crazed bastards” are going to actually start killing people …..so I hope that Sloggers will not count this as too far Off Topic.

Below is a link…..believe it or not as you like, but at least it seems to have some genuine scientific basis, that says that Europe as a whole, and Germany in particular, is likely to have a long cold snowy winter….we will see…..One map also seems to predict that Athens be very cold in November …….and SE England seems to turn blue from Jan to March.

Brussels v the markets-NO CONTEST.The EU non democracy v national democracy-this one will take longer to unravel,but the end result is becoming clear.There is no historical precedent for political systems with unemployment of European youth levels to survive.

Spain is indeed a basket case. I know Madrid, Catalunya, Andalucia and Barcelona best, though I have been to most places in the country. I would not say that nepotism in Andalucia is worse than elsewhere, or corruption. But what was a poverty-stricken agricultural and fishing economy until the 1960s and 70’s has shifted to low to mid grade tourism and the massive sale of land and houses in recent decades. Cubic km of concrete have been spread around the coast, with dubious aesthetic results. There have also been a lot of EU investment subsidies, some of which have been spent in the way intended. However that is not a guarantee of success, just look at the Torre del Mar to Velez Malaga tram line, now closed after a short but very costly life. The housing part is clearly unsustainable and indeed has failed and failed big time. From a roaring success to an utter disaster in a couple of years takes some doing, but they did it! I don’t think the several hundred thousand buyers who are needed for the existing stock will materialise any time soon, if ever. That source of income is dead for the next 20 years. Which leaves Andalucia with tourism (a lot of it cheap low margin holidays for the UK population), a little light manufacturing industry and agriculture. Olive oil is hugely important around Jaen, Ubeda and Baeza. Now is not a good time for the olive oil market to be opened to Morocco but that is what has recently happened. The result is that market prices are below Spanish cost. In these circumstances, I don’t find it too plausible that Andalucia could secede from the other 16 comunidades autonomas, they need Madrid’s regular cash injection. Unless of course it starts to come straight from Brussels – divide and conquer. Ojo Sr Rajoy!

I’m very happy to go along with almost everything in this anaylisis….the break up into smaller states is somrthing I am convinced is likely to happen in Spain in particular…….If the Sprouts believe in the idea of dealing with smaller regions so they can bully them, they want to be careful….in Africa, ants can eat elephants…..if there are enough of the little sods.

Whether I am sentimental or stupid, like JW I think and hope that after the crash, something good will come…..that we can avoid a Mad Max world but find a competative system that is not ruled by unelected dictators or those who hold the pursestrings to paper promises of real gold or debts to be paid.